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Are games art? Solved.
The formalist/zinester war of games definition? Solved.
Where is the Citizen Kane of games? Solved.
What happens when the uncanny valley is no longer uncanny? Solved.
When will the singularity occur? Solved.

Whoever would have thought that a teaser trailer for a game about England and Australia’s biennial cricket grudge match could so deftly resolve the many dilemmas which have for so long haunted videogames and technology?

That’s wildly understating the profundity of this achievement, mind you. Everything is different now.

Not only do I feel fully informed about exactly how Ashes Cricket 2013 looks and plays in the wake of this – I also have the answers to my every existential question. Take a seat, watch this, and prepare for your definition of reality to be forever altered.

My God, it’s full of stars.

Now, at long last, I know what it is I must do with my life. Thank you, Ashes Cricket 2013 Teaser Trailer. You’ve taught me so much – about games, about the world, about the universe, but most of all about myself.

I start to understand why Mrs Llewyn enjoys watching the cricket so. I guess I’ve always got bored and wandered out of the room before the real action starts. Still, you’d think that kind of thing would make the highlights programmes at least.

I Googled it, bat I think I’ll let it run by. Funny thing is it made me want to watch The Return of the Jedi. About half-way through I got uncomfortable, so I shifted my leg before Wicket nicked Leia’s bike.

Nice future. Would be a shame if something were to ‘appen to it. The future ‘as a nasty ‘abbit of catchin’ fire……If you were to purchase some insurance, me and the lads could see to it that the future does not catch fire.

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe… stumps on fire at the crease of Trent Bridge… I watched Ian Botham glitter in the bad light near Edgbaston… all those moments will be lost in time, like Geoff Boycott in the rain. Time to die.

“You’re standing alone at the cease…”
“Which one?”
“What?”
“Which crease?”
“Does it matter?”
“Well, how come I’d be there?”
“Maybe you’re the night watchman, or maybe you just ran Clarke out. It doesn’t matter. You look down and you see a seagull that has been hit by a cricket ball. It’s struggling to get up, but it can’t. You’re not helping it. Why is that?”
“You write these questions down yourself Mr. Benaud?”
“It’s a Test match, designed to provoke a jingoistic response of sporting patriotism. Shall we continue? Tell me the first thing that comes into your about… Warney”
“Shane Warne? Let me tell you about Shane Warne…”
HOOOOOWZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!!!!!

The conclusion I’m drawing from this comment thread is that the RPS readership is not suffciently steeped in a correct and proper deference for the majestic sport of cricket.

As for the game itself, I’m very much looking forward to a PC version having been quite fond of the prior Xbox incarnation. Possibly more suited to the shorter formats of the game, however – Any attempt to actually play a test match inevitably dissolved into a madcap run frenzy and brisk double hundreds scored before tea on the first day, before the player really got bored and watched their batting line up collapse like mid-90s England. The bowling was very well implemented though, and if they can spruce up the graphics and animations a bit we might well have a half decent game on our hands.

This has always been the problem with cricket on computers. There are only two main approaches:

1. You get to actually bat and bowl and field. Nobody has ever really managed to crack this, mechanically. Brian Lara Cricket was kind of fun on the Super NES but it still often degenerated into your friend bowling slow looping bouncers or you hitting slog sweeps to everything, because you’d worked out how to exploit it. And then you’re also bowling or facing each individual ball in a Test match and it takes hours and hours of gruelling work to get a game in. It’s hard to compress.

2. Spreadsheet Manager. The International Cricket Captain series essentially gives you a couple of aggression sliders and a button that advances the overs. It simulates cricket matches quite realistically but you don’t really have much to do.

I don’t think either of these really satisfy. What I’ve been thinking about for years is

3. A kind of deck-building card game where the mechanics are completely different to cricket but the kinds of scores and situations you get are realistic. For example, you’d maybe start with a stock of eleven cards and as you lose a wicket you have to discard one, to simulate your diminishing resources. That sort of thing.

Have you ever played dice cricket? It’s kind of similar to what you describe in point 3, if simplified to a ludicrous degree. Dice are rolled to calculate score, with a small chance each time of being dismissed. The scoring runs as if you have 10 batsmen each trying for a high a score as possible, before the next player has a go.

Given that that highly simplified format gave me plenty of rainy day entertainment in my youth, a slightly more advanced version would be fantastic.

Yes, at school I used to play that pencil cricket version where you used a hexagonal pencil as a die. That was basically my starting point – that and Top Trumps, which didn’t generate cricket matches but did give you a sense of individual players. I’ve been trying to work out the mechanics of it in my head because it might be fun to punt it at Kickstarter or something. Using a limited and diminishing pool of player cards feels like a fun way to model the resource aspect of the game; it’s the interaction between the players that needs to feel fun and strategic. Somehow the fielding team needs to be able to take a wicket at any time without it then implying teams all out for low scores; so there needs to be some kind of randomizing factor that scales with player skill?

You could perhaps implement some sort of bluffing mechanic, that might capture the spirit quite well – an over played out by both players simultaneously, with various different shot selections / deliveries. You would get different actions depending on the combination, with poor shot selection to the wrong delivery leading to a wicket – needs some work but I think that’s already the basis of a game I would endlessly pester my cricket weary chums to play with me!

I did have an idea for playing individual deliveries as a card game; you’d have a kind of 3×3 grid which determined where the ball was pitching (full, short, leg, off, straight) and there would be a kind of stud poker showdown to work out where the bowler bowls and what kind of ball the batsman plays. You turn them up one after another and move a marker about as each card alters the position. A certain number of cards face up so that there’s information about the initial direction, that sort of thing. I can imagine bowler cards like

SHANE WARNE

You may treat any ‘leg break <-' card as an 'arm ball ^' card and vice versa
At no time do you have to show more than one card face-up

or

KEVIN PIETERSEN

Once per delivery, you may switch the position of any two hole cards

But one difficulty is working out what kind of scale to play the game at. Do you simulate every ball? That could be nice, but it will then take five days to play a match. Do you simulate each over? That seems like the best solution, but then it starts to feel more abstract.

@iucounu: Potentially both. A semi-abstract over-by-over simulation with the possibility of triggering ‘key ball’ events. The key ball events would play out with both players participating in an individual delivery, ideally allowing skilful players to influence events with an important wicket, an inspiring six or maybe just a missed opportunity. These events could perhaps feed back short term into the wider game, representing the effect an inspiring moment, or monumental mistake, can have on the rest of the team.

Those who listened to Roy & HG in the 80s to 90s would remember that they created the definitive Test Match computer game. As the advertisement said:

“Once the software has been inserted the computer cannot be switched off until stumps on Day Five. Experience the thrill of delays due to rain. Accurately simulates the collusion between opposing captains when a draw is imminent.”

You know I was sure Alec was being sarcastic; saying a cricket trailer will answer the world’s greatest mysteries and whatnot.
But now I know I was so, so, soooo wrong. Alec thank you for such a glorious enlightenment. I didnt think life’s questions could be answered with flaming balls; but I was wrong for doubting you.
(Also guys the ‘Ashes’ are actually an important thing in cricket, check it: The Ashes

I watched this after following the link from the Leviathan trailer. About half-way through, the Paradox live-stream which I had paused restarted for no apparent reason, so in the background I heard:
– “submarines, will the game have those?”
– “yeah, if the game does well, we might add them in.”

Wow, and I mean that, just wow. I was reading Mike Brearley’s “The Art of Captaincy” only the other week in preparation for the new season, it’s a little ritual I have, designed to get me into the correct frame of mind for taking out the Sunday XI… but goddammit all to hell, it’s now just 5 hours I’ll never get back.

I’m going to capture this trailer onto my laptop, take it to the first match on Sunday and show it to the lads.

“That, gentlemen, is cricket. Now go out and play up, play up, and play the game”